One type of a fixing apparatus has a heat generating layer in a fixing belt and causes heating of the heat generating layer by an induction heating (IH) method. A toner image is fixed on a recording medium when the recording medium having the toner image passes through the fixing belt.
Another type of the fixing apparatus has an automatic system to shutdown the fixing apparatus when a temperature of a fixing unit (e.g., fixing belt) is abnormally increased. In such a fixing apparatus, the system may erroneously shut down the fixing apparatus, even when the temperature of the fixing unit, as a whole, has not increased to an upper limit temperature. This erroneous shutdown of the fixing apparatus may occur, for example, when the temperature at a region of the fixing unit is locally increased more than the other regions as a result of the induction heating.